Patricia Mou

Such virtues are in dwindling supply in America. Two thirds of all our first marriages end in divorce. The war between children and parents has never been uglier (since it is now concealed, rather than public as it was in the '60's). We think AOL and the local mall are communities. We think that Disney, the corporation, is a story-teller. And, to... See more

Instead of looking for a cause to devote your life to, you might try to become someone who is useful and level-headed in a crisis, who is well connected and makes friends easily, or who regularly has good ideas.

The apparent happiness of Africans, against all horror, seems to derive from a sense of connectedness, or as the Zulu put it, "ubunto." This word is often translated to mean community, but one of them gave me what I think is a more accurate definition: "I am because we are; we are because I am."

 Ignore what others may be thinking of you, because they aren’t.

I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work.

I believe that extolling the pursuit of happiness was a toxic stupidity entirely unworthy of my greatest American hero, Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, it is a poison that sickens our culture more wretchedly every nanosecond. I wish he'd never said it.It produces a monstrous, insatiable hunger inside our national psyche that encourages us ever more... See more

Most of us, however, develop a portfolio of meaning – we have multiple sources of it in our lives, and cannot in fact derive it from only one source any more than we can be healthy on a diet of bread and water.

If boredom is a necessary ingredient, then portable internet is a disaster for doing the work.

A successful tribe is not one that never fails at coordinating. It’s one that is antifragile—one that has a set of proven-to-be-robust mechanisms to handle failures.